INTERFACES

Ken Sinclair Enviromation Services Inc. Email / URL

How will you interface with your environment?

The media you choose, and how familiar you are with it will govern your success in achieving a personal Enviromation. The desire to interface and interact with technology must be present, and you must see the advantages in achieving a successful interface. The technology absolutely must fit in your lifestyle and provide added value, in areas of convenience, entertainment, and a necessary link to your livelihood.

Commonly Used Types of Interfaces

Push Button

The push button has become the universal interface due to its simplicity and diversity. We call it, “The make me happy button.” The buttons know what function you want and does it. Telepathy control has not yet been perfected, so generally a task must be described, of what the button is going to do, before we place it in our environment. If the function and the location are correct, the push button can be one of the most successful interfaces. With the extension ability of a remote device the location of the button is no longer a concern and the ability to have several locations greatly increases the functionality. If the action of the button is fed back to a computer logic type of interface the action can be conditional or provide different responses for different patterns in your environment. How did a simple push button become so complicated??

Your environment is predicable.......... you......... are the reason that the design of a make me happy button is so difficult.

You can use remote buttons to control your security system, lights, appliances and set scenes.

Telephone

The telephone is not a particularly user friendly interface device but it has gained wide acceptance because of its incredible functionality. The collection of push buttons is able to link with anyone in your known environment. You can pay bills, transfer money, order pizza or an infinite number of other tasks and communication functions. The ability to take this interface device with you in the form of a cellar phone has further increased the functionality. Phones are located every where in our environment. You can extended this useful interface device to control your lights, appliances, stereo, TV, sprinkler, garage door, or even your hot tub from any phone in your house or the world.

You can now combine all your remotes in to one with a device that will provide visual display to show which device you are communicating with. In addition, you can extend IR control to other areas in your home and extend the remote's capabilities to included appliances, lights, remote speakers, and even complete scenes control.

Home Computer

The many push buttons on a computer's keyboard, have been simplified by the widely accepted Windows interface, and click and drag motions on a mouse with just three buttons. The power of this interface is just beginning to be understood by most. This Windows interface, unlike previous devices, allows you to bring an infinite number of virtual buttons, to an infinite number of screens and connect an endless number of tasks. The screens are completely flexible and provide a virtual representation of our environment in schematics or digital pictures. Soft buttons can be overlaid in logical areas and this complex machine can actual simplify your mating with the technological environment.

Several graphical interface programs exist that provide an agreeable interface for automating your environment. These interfaces can be configured to operate with the other types of interfaces described above, and they provide the conditional logic for simple push button operation.

Interface to the Interface device

Once you accept one or more of the above interface devices, your focus becomes to seamlessly interface these devices with your personal Environment. The integration of Home Office further increases the complexity. Successful mating in this area involves interior design, ergonomics, available space and strong personal preference.

Combining technologies such as telephones, faxes, home computers and interactive videos creates some unique challenges. How can you mate this strange new combination of functionality into a conventional home environment? Providing an ergonomically, and atheistic acceptable solution to your Enviromation may prove to be the greatest challenge.